Namdrik Atoll Reunites Lost Fishermen
In December 2011, Kiribati fisherman Uein Buranibwe, 53, and his 26-year-old nephew Temaei Tontaake set out on what should have been an 80-kilometer trip home when their GPS batteries died and currents swept their small boat deep into the Pacific. For 33 days they drifted more than 600 kilometers, surviving on what little tuna they could catch, sometimes going three or four days with no food and so little rain that they resorted to drinking salt water while a US Coast Guard search failed to spot them.
Their boat finally ran aground on remote Namdrik Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where locals took them to the only resident who spoke their language. She turned out to be a descendant of Temaei’s uncle Bairo, who had vanished at sea in the 1950s, washed up on the same atoll, and started a family there, solving a 50-year family mystery.